At the Faire

I went to the Lehigh Valley Mini-Makers’ Faire yesterday, helping out Don Dagen do some robotics, Arduino, and Makey Makey demos. Don is a mechanical engineer with a passion for teaching kids. (If you’re a school looking to get this started on the primary level, you should hire him, btw)

It was held in the former Bethlehem Steel works, a cool repurposing of industrial space, called SteelStacks. I mainly held down the robot table, where we had a drawing bot, made from Knex pieces, an Arduino, a wireless shield, and 3 servo motors. We used S4A (Scratch for Arduino) to program it. Don also brought a Sparkiduino, a cool little self-contained Arduino robot. We basically had a steady stream of people all day who wanted to play with the bots, as well as play the Makey Makey pong game that Don had set up with a nerf sword, a giant fly swatter, a carrot, and an Angry Birds hat!

I didn’t have much time to see all the rest of the amazing stuff, though there was a laser harp near us, which is my own dream project. Long day, but fun!